[linux-cifs-client] Re: Identify a host

[John G Walker]

On Mon, 14 May 2007 10:29:32 -0500 "Steve French (smfltc)"
<smfltc at us.ibm.com> wrote:

> linux-cifs-client-request at lists.samba.org wrote:
> 
> >I'm trying to implement cifs instead of smbmount. I'm using SuSE 10.2
> >on the client machine and 10.0 on the server.
> >
> >As I understand it from the manual, if I have mount.cifs installed
> >(which I have), I should be able to specify a host name instead of an
> >ipaddress when specifying a share name. However, I find that, if I
> >don't specify the share name, the mount command can't find the host.
> >
> >The host is visible via network manager, smbclient, etc. So what
> >should I do to do a cifs mount that I'm not doing?
> >  
> >
> To understand the cause of your problem we need more information, but 
> the mount command
> can of course identify the host by TCP name (DNS name)..
> 
> First though ... your terminology is unusual.   A share name is part
> of a UNC name
> (ie Universal Naming Convention name).    It is preceded by the
> server name e.g. a TCP host name,
> or IP address or in older clients an RFC1001 (netbios) name.   The
> share name is similar to
> an NFS export in some ways - but in either case you also need to 
> identify the server's ip address or
> tcp name.

Yes. I'm not sure what you're getting at here. The important word in
what you have written is "or". This is what I'm asking about. I don't
want to have to specify the ip address.

> 
> So mount syntax is typically as follows:
> 
>     mount -t cifs //tcp-name-of-server/share-name   
> /local-directory-to-mount-over
> 
> e.g.
>     mount -t cifs //myhost.mycity.rr.com/public   /mnt -o user=my-name
> 

Correct. I'm not sure why you are repeating the manual here. Is there
some subtle point that I've missed?


> If you can not ping "myhost.mycity.rr.com" (or similarly "nslookup 
> myhost.mycity.rr.com")
> then the server name is not in DNS and you would need to configure
> your client to map
> that name to the ip address of that system or add the system into
> your DNS

Now this is what I'm looking for. I ping Fred (where Fred is the name
of a server) and ping can't find it.

So what precisely do you mean by "add the system into your DNS"?
Shouldn't this sort of thing happen automatically? Under SuSE 10.0 and
10.1, I didn't have to do anything to get smbmount working.

In any case, shouldn't the system get the ip address from the router?
This is what I want to happen. What I have at the moment is a setup
where I have to enter the ip address manually. I'm not particularly
interested in an alternative way of entering the ip address manually.

> or specify the
> ip address on the mount.

Please read what I wrote. This is my problem. I don't want to have to do
this. I'm currently doing this as a workaround. My question is how to
mount cifs without doing this.


>   If you can ping the server, and the share 
> name exists
> (you can use "smbclient -L //myhost.mycit.rr.com" to list the shares
> on the server)

As I said in my original post, smbclient works and shows the shares.
Again Please read the original post.

> then most connection problems have to do with security on the server 
> (the user
> does not exist for this domain with this password) or with firewall 
> configuration
> (blocking port 445 and port 139)

Ports 445 and 139 are not blocked. In any case, if it was a firewall
problem, then  the mount would not work even if the ip address was
specified. 

> - or for older servers (pre-Windows
> NT4) you also need to specify the server's RFC1001 (netbios) name
> e.g. among the mount options adding "servern=MYNETBIOSNAME"
> _______________________________________________
>

The server is a SuSE 10.0 machine, but I tried this anyway. No luck.

Thanks for replying. I was beginning to think my post was going to sit
there forever. I don't, however, think you've fully grasped the
problem. Perhaps if you read my replies to your points, you'll get a
better idea of what I'm asking,

-- 
 All the best,
 John